Making a scoop cutaway

Once again, I did a ton of research, and there are 3 or four different approaches. I decided on this for now. It worked well for this application, which was to use a simple binding scheme with no purfling. That allowed to use a curved insert for the scoop that matched the binding.

In previous pictures, you've seen where I made my own full height kerning to span from the back to the top. This was to insure that I'd have gluing surface anywhere the cutaway was made. I also put extra material on the top above the tone bar for the same reason.
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So here is our cutaway template. Made from a piece of 4" ABS pipe cut at a 45 degree angle. There's a key reason to use this.

Here is the traced outline of the ABS pipe. Targeting the 18th fret for depth.

And here is our "implement of destruction" for cutting the cutaway. With sand paper wrapped around the ABS pipe, I'll sand the scoop out which should give me a nice consistent profile.

After about 15 minutes of sweat. This is when I realized I should tilt the vacuum holder back and sand on the level. My leg muscles were burning...

A shot of "the beast" in action. 

After I knew about where the cut would be on the side, I used a fret saw to cut a little faster rather than sanding all the way in. Note that if you're confident of where the lines are on the side, you could do most of this at once with a band saw, but I wasn't.....

here's the final cutaway (literally). For the last bit, I used a rounded file to make sure everything was planar top and bottom (was too difficult to do that with the monstrous sander).

Time to make the insert. Here is my vacuum mold, made from a piece of 4" PVC pipe. This is important. The PVC is schedule 40, the ABS is schedule 80. The difference in their outside diameters is about 1/8" or .125 which is close to the thickness of my veneer stack for the insert. That means the OUTSIDE of the insert will match the INSIDE of the cutaway we just made. Below is my test stack.

So for the real insert, I used 4 pieces of Indian Rosewood veneer that measured .017" thick. The walnut burl was coming in at around .024. Together it adds up to .092", about the thickness of the sides. So this insert needs no support other than the gluing surface on the sides.

Here's the veneer sandwich after I pulled it from the vacuum bag. I used the cold press glue again, which was odd. The glue bound to the wax paper on top too, so I had to sand away all the wax paper from the rosewood side. But it did give me a good 15 minutes of open time to work with the stack and not have to panic.

Insert has been rough cut to size.

Perfect fit!

Glued in and bound up.

Here it is after gluing and sanding flush.

Bevel and cutaway!

The walnut burl looks great, and the rosewood in the stack matches the binding.

 RETROSPECTIVE. This worked well for the simple binding scheme, but the sanding part was a LOT of work. I think in the future, I will adopt Kent Everett's (see beveled armrest post) approach to making the cutaway. Maybe solid blocking, profiled and "scooped" before it's glued into the body. Then I can rough cut the scoop, final sand to the support, and then use a single veneer to cover. By making a ledge on the soundboard ahead of time, I can do a more complicated purfling scheme.

With full support in place for a veneer, I could also do more of a Venetian transition on the shoulder, rather than a Florentine style cutaway.